1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method of producing tufted articles such as a carpet or blanket product.
2. Description of the Related Art
For many years tufted articles have been produced on machines utilizing a bank of needles which pierce a foundation or backing sheet to form loops or tufts of yarn through the surface of the backing sheet. Materials such as carpets can be produced on such machines at a generally lower cost and greater throughput than woven carpet produced on weaving looms.
Specially constructed Wilton weaving looms have been used to produce articles in a face-to-face configuration. In this process a double structure is woven and then split into two cut pile fabrics. An advantage of this type of construction is that production throughput is increased to nearly double that of standard looms. A further advantage is that the dead pile yarn (per unit area) woven into the backings of two patterned fabrics made on a face-to-face loom is lower than that of comparable fabrics woven on standard looms.
Examples of tufting machines for producing a double plush-like product such as a carpet and pile upholstery fabric are described in British Patent specification No. 821702 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,357,886. A disadvantage of the invention described in specification No. 821702 is that a locking stitch is required in order to lock the tufts to the backing sheet. The same disadvantage applies to the invention described in the U.S. specification and it also has a complicated needle support arrangement required to overcome the disadvantage mentioned in the prior German patent specification No. 1785451 B. The German specification requires the needles to be spaced apart to allow for separate grippers to be included for each row of needles. This results in a carpet with a large spacing between adjacent tufts.
An object of the present invention is to provide a method of producing tufted articles or products using a face-to-face technique to increase significantly production throughput and to offer a useful alternative choice in the production of carpet or blankets or other tufted products.
An object of the present invention is therefore to provide a tufting machine with a minimum of spacing between adjacent tufts without the need for the added complication of bulky mechanisms for the insertion of locking stitches in the backing sheet.
Another object of the invention is to reduce the dead yarn per unit area (as a percentage of total pile yarn weight) in the back of fabrics produced on double sliding needle bar and other patterned tufted fabrics.
According to a first aspect of the invention there is provided a method of producing tufted products including the steps of:
installing a second set of reed fingers relative to a tufting machine;
optionally installing lower presser foot;
feeding to the tufting machine a pair of backing sheets with the second set of reed fingers positioned between the backing sheets;
operating the tufting machine in normal manner to form through the backing sheets, a face-to-face structure without the inclusion of any backing stitch and in which the lower presser foot if included temporarily holds the yarn during needle retraction;
cutting or dividing the face-to-face structure to form two separate tufted products.
According to the second aspect of the invention there is provided a tufting machine adapted to produce either a cut pile and a loop pile tufted product or two cut pile products.
According to a third aspect of the invention there is provided a retrofit kit for a tufting machine including a second bank of reed fingers adapted to be positioned between a supply mechanism or mechanisms adapted to supply a pair of backing sheets and a cutting or slicing mechanism adapted to split a face-to-face structure produced by the modified tufting machine.
According to yet another aspect of the invention there is provided a tufted article or product produced according to the method or on the machine as hereinbefore defined.
Further aspects of the invention which should be considered in all its novel aspects will become apparent from the following description which is given by way of example only.